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A number of years ago, maybe 2000, Becky Hassman, Lori Field, myself and John, Mark and Cheryl Lieurance (my memory is fuzzy ..... hope I did not forget anyone....) went to audit Ray Hunt in Columbia Missouri and enjoyed listening to him talk about horses and life. He autographed an article in Eclectic Horseman for me with the word "THINK!" and as the years go by, I am reminded agian and again the truth about thinking my way through a problem, and teaching my horse to think, not react. Then the following year, Lori and I bravely (or foolishly?) signed up for the colt starting clinic and took my horse Soloman (a stallion at the time) and Lori's gelding Calvin. All the colts were turned loose in the coliseum, and most huddled at the far end of the arena in a group to begin with. Soloman was left in the round pen because he was a stallion. Calvin proceeded to walk around the arena and visited with every single person over the fence to get his pets. He was quite sure that all those people were there for him. We got all the colts saddled, and Soloman's response was to put his head down and buck and squall and bawl ... I had saddled Sol at home before and was quite suprised by his response ... and thinking ... "Oh dear.." .... maybe he didnt like being in the round pen all by himself... The other thing we found out, was Ray does not babysit folks in the colt starting classes ... if you signed up to ride in a colt class, you better cowboy up and ride. I think it was the third day, and Ray opens up the door to the coliseum and told us all to go ride around the fairgrounds (not together, but by ourselves in different directions) and come back in about a half an hour. My life flashed before my eyes ... and I thought of all the things that Sol had never seen before like dumpsters, man hole covers, paving.... and I said a prayer, and trusted to my horse .... I was quite suprised when we all made it back to the arena under control and in one piece 30 minutes later without any incidents, accidents, spooking, bucking, or running off ... you see we had only been mounted and riding in a halter for a couple of days .... But that is how shrewd Ray was about reading horses and humans, he knew he could send us out there and we all would return. He was also teaching us a good lesson about trust in our horse. Now don't get me wrong, Ray was always saying preperation, preperation, preperation, this was not blind faith.
Ray is a wealth of pithy sayings, and I have many of them that run through my head on a daily basis. I have laminated a calender of them, and keep them on a spiral ring to share. The horse was always first for him, and I don't know that he had much use for the human, as he had seen the human let the horse down too many times, he said he never met a human as good as a horse. But he knew that to make life better for the horse he had to teach the human, and he started traveling all over to spread the word in clinic format.
I think that Ray has influenced equine professionals, equestrians, and horse lovers and changed the quality of life for more horses than probably anyone else in the world by teaching the human to consider the horse, and how the horse views the world, not through our eyes but through theirs. A few of us also attended a benifit clinic for Tom Dorrance held in Fort Worth, Texas hosted by Ray Hunt. There were 4 round pens in the coliseum, 10 colts to a pen, and 40 clinicians showed up at $1,000 each to start colts, like Buck Brannaman, Pat Parelli, etc. etc. .... now that was amazing weekend! It was a fitting tribute to the father of natural horsemanship, Tom, by all those folks to clear a weekend to be there for the benifit. Unfortunately, Tom was too sick to attend. I can remember Ray Hunt telling all those professionals, "Make Tom proud of us." ... meaning do the right thing for your colt, don't just get him rode .... and Ray ran the clinic just as he would any other, and called those professionals to task when he thought they needed guidence or were letting their ego get in the way. |
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